


Memorize Your Lines

by lurrel



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Five Times, Guns, M/M, linear, nonlinear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-20
Updated: 2011-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-17 03:19:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurrel/pseuds/lurrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Four times Eames told Arthur he loved him, and one time he really meant it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memorize Your Lines

**01.**  
The job is in Botswana. Arthur has a strange fondness for Botswana, he likes the unsurprising deserts and never seems to sweat in the heavy humidity. In many countries, Arthur is the off-putting one, the one used to unsettle. In Botswana, everyone takes to Arthur immediately, making Eames always feel a little off his game. It helps that Arthur, of course, somehow, speaks Setswana. Arthur insists on staying in a rondavel, a little round hut, and Eames stays with him because he knows Arthur will get a furrow between his eyebrows in annoyance. Cobb, of course, wants to stay in a hotel and checks into the nicest one in Gaborone.

The government has hired them this time, because the diamond mine owners refuse to renegotiate, and it is a fairly routine extraction. He plays a cousin, a formidable woman with impeccable taste in diamond jewelry, and De Beers is talked into giving up another sliver of shares.

There is a party, after, and a beautiful woman with gold earrings asks Arthur to dance. He gracefully accepts, but Eames leans over and whispers “Don’t forget – I love you,” into his ear, runs a thumb over his wrist, and laughs as the other man blushes straight to the tips of his ear. Eames settles back in his seat, drinks a beer and watches them dance in the hotel ballroom. Everyone there is dressed colorfully, a contrast to how dull he finds the grassy flatness outside. Arthur insists it’s because he hasn’t seen all the lovely bits of the country, but Eames is dubious at best. Cobb sits next to him, drinking a beer as well.

“Looks like Arthur’s going to need that rondavel all to himself tonight, huh?”

At this, Eames feels something that is a little like jealousy spark, and so he pulls Arthur away for the next dance.

“What brought this on?” Arthur asks, nimble on his feet as the song changes from slow to more contemporary gumba-gumba, a blend of Zulu and saxophone.

“I’m staking my claim,” Eames says, and then he dips the slighter man.

Pulling Arthur up is easy, and the man is laughing, grin broad, eyes sparkling with alcohol and mirth. He trusts Eames to not drop him, because he knows Cobb is watching, wary. Eames, this, it was safe.

“I guess I’ll acquiesce, this time, Mr. Eames,” he says. Eames often looks back at this dance, and wonders if this is how it really starts, if Arthur’s smile had planted a seed somewhere inside him. Eames is terrible at making things grow.

 

 **02.**  
Eames doesn’t mind being the passive partner with Arthur, but finds his entire approach to sex clinical at best. It's not that he doesn’t think that Arthur cares (he knows too well that Arthur does), but Arthur never lets loose, never fucks with abandon. Arthur is also so _careful_ , and Eames enjoys restraints, not restraint.

So. Eames likes taking control, pinning Arthur on his back and spreading those muscled legs as wide as he can, and then a little bit more, just to hear him whimper. He likes fucking him slowly, dragging it out, calling him filthy names.

“Mmm, pet, I love you like this,” Eames says against Arthur’s sweat-damp neck and he gets a half groan as Arthur cants his hips up. He slowly jacks him off, Arthur’s legs wrapped around his waist, and he manages to wring several incredible noises out of Arthur’s throat by twisting his hips and plunging deeper into that heat.

“Oh Arthur,” he pants, because his orgasm is coming too, and he is a talker. “Oh, oh, yes love, like that,” and his eyes shut tight because Arthur is milking him, squeezing around him and it’s so tight that Eames thinks a part of him might explode. “Love you,” he says, and starts pumping Arthur’s cock faster.

When Arthur comes, Eames is kissing him, and he pulls back to admire Arthur’s face: flushed, eyes wide.

“Okay,” he says, kissing Eames again, and then Arthur clenches and rolls, fucks himself on Eames, and fuck, he forgets English and only knows Arthur, Arthur, Arthur.

 

 **03.**  
The main apartment Arthur keeps is in Paris, and it has one enormous window but only one lamp in the living room. When the sun goes down, it gets dim and a little eerie, if Eames is honest with himself. Arthur himself will be curled in an overstuffed rocking chair, the only piece of furniture that stays consistent from flat to flat. Sometimes he slides on reading glasses, but most of the time he will squint at books that he buys from street vendors in the 5th arrondissement of the city. Arthur never reads the back and selects them based only on covers, and fishes most of them out of oversized bins.

The shelves in this flat are erratically filled – Arthur likes things neat but not impersonal. A coffee cup on the table means that Eames is there, a coffee-colored ring left on the table means he is staying for an indefinite amount of time.

Eames hasn’t decided whether he will leave a mark this time, but he reads the newspaper in the adjacent couch in the inadequate lighting. He also watches Arthur, whose lips move ever so subtly as he reads (this is a sign that the novel is in French, Eames has learned).

They don’t have to work for a long time, Eames muses, sipping his coffee. Saito made sure they could have anything in the world they wanted, but Eames doubts money will get him there. Arthur looks up from his book. Eames thinks it might be poetry. Eames always thinks it’s poetry.

“I can hear your mind trying to work from over here, Eames.” His voice is neither endeared nor annoyed.

Eames smiles anyway. “What does it sound like, then, darling?”

“Tiny little rusty gears.” Arthur wriggles his fingers to illustrate.

“I suppose yours runs silently, like some spectacular computer then?”

Arthur smirks. “Obviously.” He tucks his legs up in the chair, and Eames simply looks for what feels like a long time. Dressed down Arthur is a little less stiff, and when he is down to an impeccably clean white v-neck and black linen pants, he seems younger. Arthur off the job is softer, stranger. He fidgets more, his incredible focus allowed to keep expanding rather than honing in on whatever needs to be done. Eames tries not to pick fights often.

Eames, of course, abhors house clothes and wears as little as he can before Arthur gets truly irritated, (no dicks outside the bedroom was the rule, but only because they turned out to spend whole days fucking). Today this means a pair of boxers and an unbuttoned dress shirt. He hasn’t left the flat in 48 hours.

“Well?” Arthur says expectantly. “It’s rude to stare.” His hair is getting a little long, and his face is covered in long shadows.

“I love you,” Eames says, trying the words out in his mouth. They stumble on their exit, clumsy. His tongue is just shaped wrong, he decides, too heavy.

Arthur’s head cocks a little to the side.

“Eames.” The tone is thoughtful.

“Arthur.” Eames briefly wishes for a time machine to return to an era where Arthur’s dark gaze didn’t unnerve him.

“You’re not allowed to stay here if you’re going to lie to me,” Arthur says levelly as he settles back, book re-opening.

“Sorry, darling,” Eames says, and he means it. “It won’t happen again,” he adds, but that is insincere.

 

 **04.**  
They are running on a rooftop, and Arthur is bleeding from an elbow to the head. His vision is swimming and Eames is shooting blindly behind him. He feels stupid leaping from building to building in Buenos Aires, like he’s in some kind of ridiculous superhero action film, but there they are.

Eames finally shoots the penultimate goon, but the last one clips him in the shoulder, knocking him off balance and then he feels the catch of his ankle on cement and then he is sure he is going to die oh fuck. Arthur’s vision narrows as he tackles the larger man.

He wraps his arms around Eames’ broad chest and lets himself tumble backward onto the roof, and Eames lands on top of him with a rib crushing thud. Arthur’s gun is already aimed as the breath squeezes out of him, and he shoots the last man, then rolls Eames off of him. _Eames got blood on my suit_ , he thinks inanely, looking down, and then he crashes his head back on the dusty cement. His chest heaves up and down and he closes his eyes.

They both lay panting, bleeding, on the roof of a building in a city somewhere, and Eames looks straight at the bluest sky he’s ever seen.

“Fuck. I love you,” Eames says, because his blood is still crashing in huge tidal waves in his ears and his nerves are saying this is it, this is it.

The sun is so bright that he can’t even blink.

The words roll into Arthur’s ears and he hums in response, a noise of acknowledgement. He waits patiently for the kick, eyes still shut.

It’s not a dream.

 

 **05.**  
The job is in Canada. Arthur loves Montreal, so he expects Eames to instinctively hate it. Arthur likes snow as it falls, but not after, hates snowball fighting, likes cider.

These are the things Eames knows.

He doesn’t know that Arthur has been looking for jobs that keep Eames near him, that this is probably the simplest job he’ll ever do and there’s a reason Yusuf and Ariadne are not there.

The husband was cheating on the heiress, it turns out, and Arthur and Eames watch hockey and drink in a bar with other polite people.

“Millionaires. Wouldn’t a private eye be cheaper?” Eames scoffs a little.

“Not nearly as dramatic,” Arthur says, fiddling with the neck of his beer bottle. His hands haven’t stopped moving since they’ve arrived to Canada.

Eames notices these things.

“Well, when I’m a millionaire—" Eames starts, and Arthur snorts. “More of a millionaire. A millions-aire.”

Arthur is trying hard not to laugh, he can tell.

“When I’m as rich as Saito,” Eames continues, looking Arthur straight on. Their faces are very close.

“Yes?” Arthur leans a hairsbreadth closer.

“I love you,” he finishes and kisses Arthur as hard as he can, tongue going straight into the wet heat of Arthur’s mouth. Eames braces himself on the bar, their only point of contact lips. Arthur’s hands remain folded in his lap, Eames notes as he pulls away. Obscene, he thinks, Arthur’s mouth closing into a small grin.

“That was the worst lead up I’ve ever heard, Eames.”

“How many lead ups have you heard, pet?”

Arthur looks down at his nails, casually. “I’m irresistible. You know that.”

He shrugs and looks up, and his eyes are burning with mischief.

But Eames can’t protest. Arthur, Arthur is a devious bastard, a man who can stretch a plan over years, lifetimes, countless deaths, and still end here, vines of want and need and love constricting Eames’ heart and lungs.

Arthur doesn’t settle. He keeps a very regular sleep schedule, always eats breakfast and cleans his guns daily. He has long toes that curl when Eames licks the back of his knee.

These are the things Eames knows.

Arthur, Arthur knows two things at the moment before Eames says “I love you,” the second time that night, voice bewildered and filled with dawning realization. He knows how to wait. And he knows how to tell when Eames is done lying.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Sleater-Kinney song, ordering of sections is deliberately ambiguous.


End file.
